“Maybe? I have no doubt about it; and my conviction is, this is what he was meaning yon afternoon. The old man was dead or dying, and nobody knew but papa—I mean my father. He knew what they had borrowed, and who they were. And most likely he knew that they were far from able to pay. There’s a proverb about borrowed siller,” said Rodie; “I cannot mind, at this moment, what it is—but it means this, that it never does you any good, and that I certainly believe.” Here he made a pause. He had once borrowed a pound, and Rodie had no such harassing recollection in all his experience. He was still owing eighteenpence of that sum, and it had eaten into a whole year of his life.
Elsie said nothing; this sudden revival of the subject awakened many thoughts in her breast, but she sat with her eyes cast down, gazing, as he was, into the dazzling glow of the fire. Rodie was now kneeling on the hearth-rug in front of it, his face illuminated by the ruddy flame.
“I don’t think,” he said, in a steady voice, like that of a man making a statement in which was involved death or life, “that papa was right——”
“Rodie!”
“No,” he repeated, solemnly, “I can’t think it was right. I know you have no business to judge your own father. But I think,” said the lad, slowly, “I would almost rather he had done a wrong thing like that, than one of the good things. Mind, Elsie, he had a struggle with himself. He said it over and over and over, and rampaged about the room, as you do, when you cannot make up your mind. But he knew they could not pay, the poor bodies. He knew it would be worse for them than if they had never got the money. It was an awful temptation. Then, do you mind, he said: ‘the Lord commended the unjust steward.’ In his sermon he explained all that, but I cannot think he was explaining it the same way yon afternoon.”
“Rodie,” said Elsie, with a little awe, “have you been thinking and thinking all this time, or when did you make out all that?”
“Not I,” said the lad; “it just flashed out upon me when Frank was going on about his debtors, and about consulting my father. That’s what made me angry as much as anything. I don’t want papa to be disturbed in his mind, and made to think of that again. It was bad enough then. To be sure he will maybe refuse to speak at all, and that would be the best thing to do; and, considering what a long time has passed, he would be justified, in my opinion,” said Rodie, with great gravity; “but to sit down and write fourscore when it was a hundred—I would stand up for him to the last, and I would understand him,” cried the young man: “but I would rather my father did not do that.”
“And of whom do you think he would be tempted to say that, Rodie?” said his sister, under her breath—Elsie had another thought very heavy at her heart.
“Oh, of the Horsburghs, and the Aitkens, and so forth, and I am not sure but Johnny Wemyss’s folk would be in it,” said Rodie; “and they are all dead, and it would fall upon Johnny, and break his heart. I hope my father will refuse to speak at all.”
Then there was a long silence, and they sat and gazed into the fire. Elsie’s idea was different. She knew some things which her brother did not know. But of these she would not breathe a word to him. They sat for some time quite silent, and there was a little stir over their heads, as if Mrs. Buchanan had risen from her chair, and was about to come down.